


River of Heaven

by templemarker



Category: Exiles Saga and Galactic Milieu - Julian May
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/pseuds/templemarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marc knew it, and it was good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	River of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ars_belli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/gifts).



> This takes place after the conclusion of _The Adversary_ and well before the events of _Intervention_. Like, several epochs before. 
> 
> Happy holidays ars_belli!

The Song of the Duat Galaxy rang through. 

It was as though, in every Unified voice, so too her voice sang. It was as agonizing as it was humbling. Thousands of daughter-words of Duat chimed with its progenitor world, with the Ships that noiselessly banked against the stars. 

Marc knew it, and it was good. 

There was little left of him materially. The matter of their brains had almost melted away, shortly after he and Elizabeth undertook the great task before them. He could remember the shock and joy of her mind, twined with his, when they became truly bodiless. He had predicted it would happen, far forward in time when Jack was young. What was their physical form was undetectable by corporeal beings. Even a rho-field could not grasp what brought them, ultimately, to ineffability. 

Yet he could feel, still. He was not the man he was when they D-jumped across the universe. He was far from the man he had been in Exile, though in many ways closer to the man he had been at the sharp peak of the Rebellion. He wondered whether he was truly a man at all, and in those times he would craft a human form for his mind and walk upon the fragile ground of one of Duat's client worlds. He relished the irony that it was to his young, enfleshed self he returned when he sought comfort; he would have rent the skin from his limbs if it had meant being like Jack, when last he looked like himself. 

He listened to Duat's song, and though he did not join it, his mind was ever linked to the great Unity of this small galaxy. 

Had he anyone to speak to about the matter, he would have credited Elizabeth entirely. It was she who embodied compassion when Marc balked at the reticence of the Duat brood. Where he saw the daughter worlds bucking and fighting at Unity--so familiar to him--she only saw confusion eased by her gentle words, her graceful interventions. She was called many names, but all of them made her a goddess of agape. 

He too had come to Unity slowly. Though he relished the challenge set to him by Creyn's vision, it was Elizabeth who believed Marc's work towards Mental Man, his rebellion from the developing Mind of their home galaxy, was rooted in evil. He hadn't known what the word meant. It was many years of working in concert with her, slipping further and further into coadunation and, one breathtaking day, the brief sweep of Unity with one of their earliest clients, before he had come to understand. 

The fear had come, and she was there for that too. 

Now, he was both at the very core of the Song and apart from it, as he knew he must be. He had seen himself only twice in the future that would come, and both times he grasped instinctively that Atoning Unifex was both fully present and ever removed. 

He had not quite embraced the name, though he understood it better now. As the Song of the Duat Galaxy grew, so too did Elizabeth begin to fade away. Her joy was palpable; even the non-sentient animals of the worlds they shepherded had felt it, and radiated primitive elation back to her.

He had shown fear again, as he lost her; as he had lost all of the minds he loved before her. But she wouldn't let him carry it; she had redacted it away with her own selfhood, sharing her contentment at their work. 

_I have done the greatest thing I will ever do,_ she said, her certainty like a clarion bell. 

_They will love Unity less without you,_ he replied, trying and failing to keep his own disappointment and grief from her and failing. 

_I am proud and grateful that Duat has come into Unity_ , she said gently, _but that is not what I meant._

He purposefully set aside what walls he had made and they joined, ecstatically, as they had done for so long. 

She had brilliantly, creatively dispersed her energies not long after, an act not of self-destruction but of peace and love. Duat's Song rose high. 

Marc was alone once more. 

Releasing his memories and thoughts to the superluminal fields of the universe, he expelled what should have been a sigh, and headed into Duat, to one shining, fully coadunated world. 

There, he found four beings awaiting him. They were Grandmaster Paramounts of their kind, resting in physical bodies but capable of discarding them at will. Their brains were a fascinating tangle of long, bundled cells; it reminded him of the twists of Grand-mère Lucille's yarn as she knitted endless pairs of mittens. 

"Welcome," said Eupathic Impulse. "It has been long since we have encountered your form."

Marc formed a physical presence similar to those of his audience and replied, "I have come now because there is much left to do."

All four beings communicated with each other, their interest, excitement, and trepidation evident in the aether. "In saying so, you imply that there is a task in which we are involved," said Asymptotic Essence carefully, her choiced words belying her thrill. "We Sing in Unity with the beings of the Duat, and each daughter-world raises its voice. Who is left to bring into the song?"

"And how are we meant to do anything when Prime Entelechy herself has passed from us?" Noetic Concordance subvocalized, swiftly admonished by the others. 

Marc kept himself from smiling. He had always liked this world. Its people spoke their minds plainly. 

"I come to you with a new task. There are realms beyond this one which await the call of Unity. I ask that you attend with me, o beings of Lene. Your sisters embrace the benevolent love of the Ships who move between the stars. Embrace the love Prime Entelechy and I shared with you, and join me in cultivating Unity elsewhere."

The four were buzzing in conversation, a thousand thoughts flying through the aether. Marc allowed himself to smile this time, or what passed for it in this form. He would never be bored, that was certain. Elizabeth had whispered the idea in his ear as Duat's Unity grew, and it had been the only logical outcome of their time there. 

"We cannot but accept," Homologous Trend said, nearly a grumble. Trend reminded him of Rogi, always reticent but always honorable. 

"It is good," Marc said. "And in the spirit of this adventure, I come to you with a new designation, in the spirit of she who came before me, and the manners of Lene." He swept his limbs in front of him to signal open acceptance. "I am Atoning Unifex. But I will not stand alone."

They regarded him with equal measure, and as One, embraced him with love and understanding. 

He showed them in that moment how to divest themselves of their remaining physical forms, and one by one each mind winked into insubstantial existence. Marc began to generate the fields around the five of them that would, in one great leap not dissimilar to ancient Brede's own, deliver them back where he and Elizabeth had started. 

_Does this place have a name?_ Asymptotic Essence asked, her curiosity shared amongst the companions and so very familiar. 

_It has many,_ Marc replied, gathering his faculties for the D-jump. _But my family called it_ la voie lactée, _the Milky Way._

As they left the Duat Galaxy shining behind them, Noetic Concordance asked plaintively, _What is milk?_

**Author's Note:**

> In Japanese, the Milky Way is referred to as 天の川, _Ama no Gawa_ , or "River of Heaven." I think Asymptotic Essence would dig that.


End file.
